


The British Invasion

by JWade



Series: Gabriel's Hogwarts Adventure [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-23
Updated: 2017-09-25
Packaged: 2019-01-04 12:51:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 16,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12169236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JWade/pseuds/JWade
Summary: The British Men of Letters have noticed the strong wards being erected in the US and rush in to stop 'stupid hunters' from messing with things they don't understand. They have no idea what they're walking into.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This one will be updated slower than my normal fics. I'm currently rewatching season 12 and will be updating sporadically when I see something I can use. I don't know how long this one will be, but it probably won't be very long.

Toni Bevell put the phone down with a sigh. Apparently, there had been word of strong wards being erected in the US. There wasn’t a Men of Letters chapter there anymore, which meant that stupid hunters were playing with things they couldn’t possibly understand. It looked like she was going to have to go teach them a lesson they wouldn’t soon forget. She tucked her son into bed and walked out the door. Destination- Kansas. She would start at the old Men of Letters bunker. If they had gotten into something they shouldn’t have that would be the first place to look. 

Toni creeped slowly up to the door of the bunker and put the key in the door, sliding it open slowly, not noticing the silent alarm it sent up. She had just reached the bottom of the stairs when two men entered the room. “Dean Winchester,” she said distastefully. She should have known those disgraces had something to do with this. “And I don’t know you,” she said to the other one. 

“And you’re not going to. Who are you and how did you get in here?” Gabriel asked narrowing his eyes at her. She was human at least. It meant that no monsters had found a way around their wards. They had too many hunters coming by from time to time for help to block humans from the wards completely, but even they couldn’t just walk in the door. The only people who should have been able to were the ones who lived here. 

“I think I’ll be the one to ask the questions here,” she said raising her gun. She couldn’t believe they had come to face an intruder unarmed, but she would definitely take advantage of it. 

Gabriel raised an amused eyebrow and resisted the urge to chuckle. She actually thought she had the upper hand. They had no need for weapons in their own stronghold and she had no idea what he was. He resisted the urge to cut his eyes up to Sam who had just walked in the still open door. “Go ahead then. Shoot if you’re going to,” he taunted. 

She didn’t need to be told twice. The sound of the shot echoed through the room, but the bullet stopped about four feet in front of her and fell to the floor. She looked at it in shock for a moment. “What is this?” 

Sam slipped behind her and grabbed her arms, pulling them behind her back and wrenching the gun from her grip in the same motion. “Basic containment ward. Nothing in. Nothing out,” he said smugly as he nodded to Dean who dropped the ward and lifted his hand to catch the manacles Gabriel tossed him. 

“Are you going to answer our questions now? Dean asked. 

“Not on your life,” she said frustrated as she struggled in Sam’s grip. 

“Suit yourself. Go ahead and put her in the dungeon for now,” Dean told his brother. 

“We’ve already got a vamp in there,” Sam pointed out. 

“She’s human. She doesn’t need warding. Put her in the tertiary dungeon. In restraints, of course. Just in case,” Gabriel suggested. 

Sam nodded and headed out to do so. Once he had returned, he asked Gabriel, “Any ideas?” 

“Well she’s British,” Gabriel said with a shrug. 

“Yeah, that’s helpful,” Dean said rolling his eyes with a snort. 

“She also has pretty strong mental shields. I mean, I could bust my way in, but who knows what state her mind would be in afterwards,” Gabriel added. 

“That’s something. So, she does have at least some level of knowledge about magic,” Sam said thoughtfully. 

“I say we give her a day or two to sweat it out and then see if we can’t get some answers,” Gabriel proposed. “She was able to get in here and apparently has a key to the place that shouldn’t even exist, and obviously intended us harm, so if I HAVE to bust my way through her mental shields and risk turning her brain to mush, I will, but it would be easier…on my conscience at least…if we didn’t have to go that far.”

“Yeah. We’ll keep that as a last resort,” Dean said with a nod. He didn’t much like the idea of destroying a human’s mind either, no matter the circumstances. He knew it might come to that though. They did need to know if some organization was moving against them, and the fact that she could just waltz in like she owned the place made him nervous. “I think the three of us, Bobby, and Henry should all stick close. I’ll call Lisa and have her, Ben, John, and Mary stay with her sister for the time being.”

“Are you sure you wouldn’t be more comfortable with them here behind the wards?” Sam asked. 

“The wards we put on her sister’s house may not be as strong as the wards here, but there no one will know where they are. We know that at least one hostile has access to this place now, and she could have an army behind her. For all we know this place could turn into a battleground. If it were just Lisa and Ben I could see giving them a choice. They can both hold their own in a fight by now, but John and Mary are only three and four. I can’t have them here if something happens,” Dean told him. 

Sam nodded. It was Dean’s choice and he could see his point. Neither option was a good one though. “Just remember. This woman apparently knew who you were. She likely knows who you are married to and it wouldn’t take much searching for her to find Lisa’s family too,” he had to point out. 

“That’s where I come in. If they get in trouble they will pray and I’ll bring them back here and lock them down in the safe room if it comes to that. If trouble comes to our door while they are here, they might just end up first in the line of fire. Dean’s right. It’s better if they aren’t here until we get this figured out.”

That decided, Dean went to make his phone call. He caught Lisa just in time. She was on her way home already. It took a little talking to keep Ben from coming back to help, but Dean convinced him that he could be needed to keep the rest of the family safe long enough for Gabriel to get to them if the worst happened. He managed to keep from telling Ben that he needed him safe too. The seventeen-year-old didn’t much like the idea of his father coddling him. It was bad enough that they wouldn’t let him hunt without his father or one of his uncles with him, but since he accepted the fact that it wasn’t a good idea to hunt alone anyway, he dealt with it. 

 

It had been a day and half since their visitor had arrived, and Sam was tapped to be the first to attempt to speak with her. “Why me?” he groaned. He felt like he was so close on the vamp cure and hated being pulled away from his books when he was actively working on something. 

“Because you’re better with people than Dean is and you’re more physically intimidating than I am,” Gabriel said pointedly. Sam couldn’t exactly argue with that so he just sighed and made a few more notes before he marked his place and headed down to the dungeons. He did grab a plate of food and a gallon of water though. She was probably hungry and thirsty by now and they could serve as incentives for her to speak. 

When he arrived in the dungeon, and the door open she turned to look at him. Her lips were chapped and she had dark circles under her eyes, but her mind seemed as sharp as ever and she glared at him from where she was chained against the wall. “Okay, so let’s start with something simple,” Sam said before she could say anything. “You tell me who you are and why you’re here and you get some water. You keep answering questions and you get some food. You refuse to answer and I walk out that door and come back tomorrow. By then you’ll be well on your way to death by dehydration and I hear that’s a pretty nasty way to go, so I’d advise being cooperative.” He had no intention of letting her die of thirst, but she didn’t need to know that. 

“Toni Bevell. Men of Letters. London chapter house. I’m here to stop you brainless American hunters from messing with things you couldn’t possibly understand,” she said imperiously. The effect was somewhat ruined by the fact that she hadn’t taken her eyes off the jug of water, but Sam gave her credit for trying. 

He sneered and handed over the jug of water despite his anger at her presumption that he and all other hunters were stupid. “Fuck you, bitch. I went to Stanford,” he snapped. “And I have the best magical education in the universe, so you have nothing on me.”

“Magical education? Hah,” she scoffed after she finished drinking. “There is only one magical school in the world and I can guarantee you never went there.”

“You mean your silly little Kendrick’s Academy? The place where you learn such a ridiculous hodge podge of hedge magic that barely works and takes far more effort than it should because of complete lack of knowledge on any of the subjects?” Sam asked condescendingly. 

“The men of letters has a long tradition of intellectual excellence…”

“You wish. Just because your small brains can’t fathom the things we are doing here doesn’t mean that we don’t understand it. We understand far more than you could ever dream.”

“Impossible,” she spat angrily. How dare he insult the men of letters. 

The door creaked open behind Sam again and Dean walked in. “Sorry Sammy. My turn to take over. Bobby just got a call from Joe. His crew is running low on werewolf cure so we need you to whip up a new batch.” Any of them could make it really, but Sam was the best at it, and he really wanted his shot at this bitch and to rub her nose in the idea that they actually had a werewolf cure.

“There’s no such thing as a werewolf cure,” she said as if speaking to small children. 

“Course there is sweetheart. We invented it years ago. Haven’t had a chance to test it on purebloods yet, but it works on the rest,” Dean sneered. 

“You couldn’t possibly have…” 

“You’re forgetting the way this works. We ask. You answer. You’re the one who barged into our home and tried to shoot us. You don’t have any rights here,” Dean said picking up a fry from the plate that Sam had brought down and put it in his mouth. “And the more you dissemble the more of this food that I eat and the less there is for you if you actually get around to answering our questions,” he added with a smirk as Sam left the room to go work on the werewolf cure.

Toni was done answering questions though. She had answered the one that got her water and she could go longer without food than these inbred idiots thought. She just had to stall for a little while longer. When she didn’t check in, someone would be coming for her. She wouldn’t be here much longer. She wasn’t stupid enough to buy their lies.


	2. Chapter 2

They checked in with their prisoner again the next day and she was once again recalcitrant. The silent alarm went off once again while Sam was with her though and he took a moment to double check her restraints. “They’re coming for me,” she said smugly. “I’ll be out of here shortly anyway and you’ll all be the prisoners. Perhaps I’ll be as kind to you as you have been to me.” Sam just glared at her and barreled out of the room once she was secure, making sure to lock the door behind him. 

He met Bobby, Dean, and Gabriel in the hallway to the entrance, Henry staying behind to activate the lockdown wards should the worst happen. They refused to let this place fall into hostile hands. Everyone not manually keyed into the wards would be kicked out and locked out. Unfortunately, including their prisoners, but it was better than the alternative. They ran into the entrance hall to find a well dressed, but rather scruffy looking man poking curiously at the containment ward that was automatically erected in case of an intruder.

Mick Davies looked up to find a combination of swords and guns pointed at him and raised his hands in surrender. “I’m unarmed. I mean you no harm.”

Gabriel immediately picked up on the accent and said, “Well you’re little friend that barged in here a few days ago obviously did,” he said skeptically. 

“Ah, so you have seen Lady Bevell. I trust she is well?” he asked hoping that he would be able to defuse whatever situation she had caused. 

“She’s locked up in the dungeon, physically unharmed, but probably very hungry by now. She should consider herself lucky, trying to shoot us in our own home,” Sam snapped. 

“She did, did she?” Mick asked calmly. “I do apologize for her behavior. That was completely uncalled for. She was only supposed to investigate and hopefully make peaceful contact. She’s always been a bit of a loose cannon though.”

“So, you send a ‘loose cannon’ to make peaceful contact? Right,” Bobby scoffed. 

“You must understand. We had no idea what we would be walking into. There have been reports of American hunters consorting with monsters, and the idea that our American bunker could have been compromised called for caution.”

“OUR bunker,” Sam interrupted. “This place was abandoned for fifty years. We have been here for almost ten. By all laws this place belongs to us now.”

“Something tells me these guys don’t care about the legal code, Sammy,” Dean said rolling his eyes.

“On the contrary, we are all about law and order, despite our…rogue elements. I assure you, if you hand her over to me, she will be duly punished for her actions,” Mick said evenly. 

Gabriel laughed. “Turn her over to you so you can just release her to come back at us again? Not gonna happen. She’s ours until we determine how much of a threat she is. And until we can determine how you people keep getting in here.”

“I can easily answer that question,” Mick offered pulling a key out of his pocket and holding it up for them. “All Men of Letters facilities come with a standard lock that this key will open.”

“Then we’ll just have to change the locks. This bunker no longer belongs to your organization. The American Men of Letters have no need for the bumbling incompetence of ignorant children,” Dean snapped. 

“We can teach you a great deal…” Mick started before he was interrupted by laughter. 

“You think YOU can teach US?” Sam laughed. “We know more than you people could ever dream of.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Mick said curiously. 

“Oh? Figured out that little ward you’re trapped behind yet?” Gabriel asked smugly. 

“Not exactly. I’m sure with some time…”

“It’s a very basic containment ward. One of the first we learned back when we were thirteen,” Sam interrupted. There was no need to tell him that it was the second time they were thirteen. “Would you like to see the arithmetic and runic analysis?”

“The what?” Mick asked confused. 

“You know, how a spell is built, the measure of power output, the anchors to the physical world and so on. You do know how to do that right? That’s what you wanted to teach us?” Dean asked haughtily. 

“I seem to be missing some important information in this situation,” Mick admitted rather than admitting that he had no idea what they were talking about. 

Gabriel could see that this guy wasn’t much of a threat and could be shown the truth much like Henry had been, so he turned to the others. “What do you think? Should we give him the tour?” 

“With precautions,” Dean nodded in agreement. 

When Sam and Bobby also agreed, Gabriel took control of the situation. “Okay, Deano why don’t you send Henry a message to stand down from the controls. You…new guy…keep your hands up while Sam searches you for weapons. You make a move, you die.”

“Understood,” Mick said raising his hands higher as the older hunter swiped something on the wall before Sam stepped forward. “And my name is Mick. Mick Davies,” he added, hoping he wasn’t going to end up in the dungeons with Lady Bevell, but knowing that if he failed to report in within six hours the full force would descend on this place and nothing would be left standing. If they did lock him up he wouldn’t be here long. “Is that a messaging spell?” he asked curiously as the paper airplane flew from the room. 

Sam snorted in amusement. “Yeah. It is. It’s not the best, but it’s the first spell Dean crafted himself back when he was eleven so he’s kind of partial to it.”

“You craft your own spells? And you did so at eleven years old?” he asked shocked. 

“Sure, we do. It’s not hard once you understand the theory behind it,” Sam said with a shrug, knowing that to these people it was nearly impossible and only the most skilled ever had the ability to create new spells after decades of study. 

Once Sam pronounced him clean of weapons, Gabriel stepped forward and handed him two thick silver bracelets. “Put these on.”

“What are they?” Mick asked nervously. 

“They will prevent you from casting any external magic while you’re wearing them,” Sam told him. “Not much point in searching you for weapons if you can use magic as a weapon.” He knew that the likelihood that these people knew any battle magic that they couldn’t counter with little effort was slim, but there was no need to take any chances. After their last encounter with these Men of Letters, this guy was going to have to prove himself to earn their trust. 

Before they got far the doorbell rang. Sam went to answer it, leaving Mick in Gabriel’s capable hands as Bobby made his excuses to go back to the phones. When he saw who it was he allowed him through the wards and the hunter stepped in to wait in the entrance hall. “I’ll be right back. I’m just gonna go grab Joe the werewolf cure.”

“You can…”

“Yes, we can. And we’re close on a vamp cure too,” Gabriel told him. 

“So, you guys are getting close?” Joe asked hopefully.

“We are. We actually meant to get the word out before but then all this mess happened and distracted us. You can start containment instead of killing. We’ll be sending Henry out once we’re sure we don’t need the backup here to start modifying the wards on the werewolf pens to hold the vampires.”

“Good. I’ll spread the word once I get back out there too,” Joe promised as Sam came back and handed him the box of vials. 

“Thanks Sam, Gabe,” Joe said as he headed back out. 

“How did you find a cure for werewolves?” Mick asked. 

“Well once we were able to isolate the curse by comparing the blood of werewolves from before they were bit and after, we were able to break it down into the individual strands of magic and work on unravelling them. Fresh bitten werewolves were easier. The curse hadn’t fully taken hold yet. That one took us less than a year. It took a few more though to be able to unravel the curse from long time werewolves. As soon as they eat their first heart, it sets the curse in deeper, and we had to take into account the new levels and dimensions before we could cure it. Any curse can be broken. It’s just a matter of figuring out how.” Sam explained the basics. He doubted this guy would be able to understand the specifics. He hadn’t missed the lack of comprehension when he mentioned the spell analysis earlier. 

“So, you don’t kill monsters? You cure them?” he asked incredulously. 

“We cure them when we can, kill them when we can’t. It’s our goal to eventually be able to cure everything, but in the meantime, we do what we have to do to protect people. We can already cure werewolves and demons. We’re close on a cure for vamps, and have begun preliminary research on how to cure transformational beings like rugaroos that change at a certain age.”

“That’s fascinating,” Mick said. He wasn’t sure how much he believed just yet, but if this were true then the Americans could actually teach them a thing or two. Not that the council of elders would easily accept that analysis. “Where did you learn all this? As far as I was aware Kendrick’s is the only school of its kind in the world.”

“In this world, yes. Our school is in another dimension and myself, Sam, and Dean, are the only people from this world to ever attend. They are very selective, you see,” Gabriel said cryptically. He had no intention of going to all the trouble to create a whole new dimension for them after all. 

By this time they had reached the library and they took some time to give Mick the tour of the library and the different subjects they’d studied, even showing him the area where their own research was stored. The old Men of Letters research was still in the archives and they just pulled out what they needed when they needed it. There wasn’t enough useful information there to be worth storing in the main library. It was more like little nuggets of gold sprinkled in huge piles of crap. They had already thrown away a good portion of it once they mined it for anything useful. 

Mick was reluctantly impressed. He had to admit that most everything they had here was over his head. After a little more conversation and some more questions from both sides, he felt that he had earned enough goodwill to ask, “May I see Lady Bevell?” 

“Why?” Dean asked suspiciously.

“Just to see for myself that she is alive and in good condition. I do have to report to my superiors with an update. I understand that you are not willing to turn her over to us at this time, but I would be remiss in my duties if I did not see to her well-being as much as I can while I’m here.”

“How about we make a deal? You promise to keep answering our questions and deal with us in peace, with whatever precautions we see fit to take until you earn our trust, and we will allow you to see her and speak to her and even begin feeding her. She will remain in the dungeons until we can be sure that she is no longer a threat to us though.”

“That is acceptable for the time being. Perhaps when I have earned your trust we can revisit the issue,” Mick said with a nod. 

“Perhaps,” Gabriel said non-commitally.


	3. Chapter 3

All three of them went with Mick to escort him to Toni’s cell intending to watch him like a hawk while they were there. “Mick?” she said distastefully. “They sent YOU to get me out of here?” 

“I was sent to investigate your progress, only to find that you attacked before even attempting to find a peaceful solution,” he said firmly. 

“They had me trapped. What would you have me do?” she snapped. 

“Obviously it is possible to reason with these people. The fact that I’m standing here proves it. I was trapped as well, likely in the same manner you were, but decided to speak with them rather than shoot at them. We can clearly see which method was more effective,” Mick said with just a touch of smugness. 

“Just get me out of here and quit with the posturing,” she ordered. 

“That will not be possible. They are currently unwilling to release you into my custody. I have secured you better treatment though, you may be glad to know,” Mick told her. 

“I don’t want better treatment. If they won’t let me out, then call in the calvary. You know how this is supposed to work, Mick.”

“No, I don’t think you understand, Toni. You were sent here to make contact. Not to start a war. You disobeyed orders, and the council will not commit troops to correct your mistake. You are uninjured, not being tortured unless you consider the withholding of food which I have made arrangements to correct, and you will be fine until we can repair some of the damage that you have done to this relationship. You brought this on yourself,” he said before turning to his hosts and saying, “Thank you for allowing me to see her.” 

They got the hint that the visit was over and led him from the room before she had even stopped sputtering. “I’ll go get her some dinner,” Gabriel offered once they got back to the main floor and Mick nodded appreciatively. 

“I hope it is understood that our cooperation depends on her continued well-being while in your care,” he added. 

“Yeah. We got that. We have no need to torture anyone as long as you cooperate with us,” Dean said. 

Mick knew that he was telling the truth by the simple fact that she had not been tortured yet. They may have gotten to that point eventually, but the fact that they were hesitant to do so gave him assurances that they would not as long as they could get the information they needed elsewhere. It remained to be seen if they would ask him for information that he could not and would not give. Perhaps things may need to escalate at that point, but he could see that they had more to gain by working together than fighting against each other. To be perfectly honest, with their knowledge and wards, he couldn’t even be sure that they could win in a frontal attack. 

Once Mick had seen the plate of food head down to the dungeons, he turned to his hosts and asked, “Am I free to go? I do need to report in soon.”

“You are free to go. And if you come back, you will ring the doorbell like anyone else. Make sure it is known that the next person to barge in here without permission will be treated as a hostile,” Sam told him. 

“Understood,” Mick said with a nod. 

“And for the time being, every time you come, you will be searched for weapons and will wear those cuffs while you’re here,” Dean added. Mick nodded again and they followed him to the door and took the cuffs back once he was outside. They also gave him their phone numbers so that he could call before coming by again. 

A few days later, Lisa and the kids were back as they realized that there was no imminent threat that the wards couldn’t handle once they changed the locks. Henry was sent out to reward the abandoned warehouses to hold vampires, and Sam and Dean went out on a hunt. It wasn’t far from the bunker and no other hunters were in the area at the time, so they decided to take it. It wouldn’t be the first hunt they had taken since Hogwarts and it wouldn’t be the last, though they were few and far between. Sometimes it was nice to get out and stretch their legs though and this one definitely seemed strange enough to peak their interest. 

It took them too long to figure out that the cause of it all was a scared teenage girl. Her psychic abilities had turned her cries for help into psychic intrusions that fried people’s brains and they had a new understanding of what could have happened to their prisoner if Gabriel had tried to bust through her mental shields. The quickly realized that she couldn’t be blamed though. She was chained up and being tortured in a basement. Of course, she cried out for help in any way she could. She never meant to hurt anyone. The mother on the other hand…she was a piece of work. She intended to kill the whole family rather than risk getting caught. She succeeded in killing her husband and son, but Magda prevented her from doing any more damage and she was arrested, but that left the girl all alone. 

Sam and Dean did some fast-talking and compulsion spells and managed to get custody of Magda. They were sure they could cure her of her abilities. It shouldn’t be difficult. If they had realized that there were still more psychics out there that couldn’t control their powers they would have taken care of it already. Until they figured it out, they could ward an area of the bunker to block her abilities. She would have to be sequestered there temporarily until they could find a permanent solution, but she easily agreed to that. She didn’t want to hurt anyone, and if they could help her, she would gladly take it. It was better than being chained up and whipped any day. 

They didn’t notice the motorcycle following them until a pit stop. Sam got suspicious when he saw a man walking towards the women’s bathroom that Magda had just walked into and both brothers were out of the car like a shot and intercepted the guy just as he pulled a gun out of his pocket. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Dean asked as they managed to surprise him and pin him to the wall. 

“Taking care of the problem that you apparently won’t,” the man said struggling in their grip. They weren’t the top of the defense class at Hogwarts for nothing though. 

Sam noticed the accent right away. “You’re one of them, aren’t you? The English Men of Letters.”

“British, actually, and yes. It seems we need to clean up your messes,” he snapped. 

“No, see. That’s not the way things work here. We are going to take her home and get rid of her powers so that she can lead a normal life,” Dean told him. 

“She’s a killer,” he protested. 

“She killed two people on ACCIDENT by screaming for help because her psycho mother had her chained in the basement torturing her senseless. That’s hardly her fault,” Sam told him daring him to disagree. 

“She’s dangerous,” the man said, not willing to give up. 

“She won’t be when we’re done with her. She’s just a child, for christ’s sake,” Sam said. 

“You think she’ll be able to be a functioning member of society after what she’s done…after what was done to her? No. She will still be a killer. That type of thing changes a person. Better to put her down now before anyone else is hurt,” he tried to reason with them. 

They heard a gasp from the doorway beside them and turned to see Magda watching with wide eyes. Judging by the look on her face, she had heard what he said. Dean closed his eyes and counted to ten as he tried to figure out how to handle this. They couldn’t just let this guy lose. He’d proved that he had no problem killing innocents, but how to get him back. Putting him in the car with Magda wasn’t an option. Dean’s eyes lit on the motorcycle and he got an idea. “You ever ridden on a motorcycle?” he asked the girl who shook her head. “Okay, here’s what we’ll do. We’re gonna chain this guy up and Sammy, you drive him back to the bunker. I’ll take Magda on the bike, and when we get there we’ll call Mick and get to the bottom of this once and for all.”

“Sounds good,” Sam said. “Come with us Magda and stay close,” Sam told her, not wanting to let her out of their sight at the moment. Who knew if there were other agents nearby to take over if this guy failed. They got back to the car and put him in heavy manacles and leg irons before chaining them together and making sure he was secure. Sam really didn’t need the distraction while he was alone in the car with him. Once he was good they tossed him in the backseat after taking the key to his bike. There was only one helmet though, so Dean gave it to Magda and hoped they didn’t see any cops on the road. Needless to say, he had Sam follow him rather than the other way around to lessen the likelihood of getting pulled over. 

They were trying to hide Gabriel’s true identity from these Brits for the time being or they would have called him for transport, but they managed to make it back and put the new guy in the same dungeon as their other Brit prisoner, chained against the opposite wall, of course. If these Brits kept up these games they were going to run out of room in the dungeons. The next one would have to go in with the vamp as it was. While Dean and Gabriel were getting him settled in the dungeons, Sam took Magda to one of the unused hallways and warded it against psychic abilities. “Now, you have to promise not to leave this hallway for the time being. Someone will bring you your meals, and I’ll bring you some books in a few minutes. You can pick any of the bedrooms in the hallway for your own, and my husband is immune to your powers so he will come by and keep you company from time to time until we can get this fixed okay?” She nodded nervously. “Are there any particular books you would like?” he asked gently knowing she must be feeling rather overwhelmed right now. 

“Maybe…some kind of fantasy? I used to like those before mom and dad got religious and cut us off from everything else.”

“Sure. We’ve got plenty of those,” Sam said encouragingly. “I’ll be right back with them,” he told her from the other side of the ward. He was back a few minutes later with a bag containing the full series’ for Harry Potter, Chronicles of Narnia, and Lord of the Rings and her eyes lit up with cheer for what was probably the first time in many years. “Don’t worry, Magda. We’ll get this figured out. We’re good at this kind of thing, and as long as you’re behind these wards you can’t hurt anyone.”

“Thank you,” she said as her eyes filled with tears of gratitude and she hugged the books to her chest.


	4. Chapter 4

They didn’t tell Mick anything over the phone, just told him to get his ass over there immediately. Mick showed up an hour later and rang the bell as they had requested. After the obligatory search and putting on the armbands, he was led inside and down to the dungeons. He was getting rather nervous. They seemed pissed, and he hoped that all the hard work he’d done trying to smooth things over hadn’t been undone. Mostly he just hoped that he wasn’t about to find himself a home in there as well. Once they stepped inside his eyes widened at the added occupant. “Ketch?” he asked confused. “What did you do?” He’d made it clear that he was handling the situation. 

“I was taking care of a problem that they weren’t,” he said curling his lip distastefully. 

“That ‘problem’ happens to be a scared and abused HUMAN little girl that you were about to kill in cold blood,” Dean snapped, not willing to let him talk his way out of this. 

“You were only to observe and provide backup support if needed,” Mick reminded him, wondering why on earth he was the only one with any sense in this situation. 

“So, you set a watchdog on us?” Dean asked Mick heatedly.

“’I’ did nothing. The elders want more than one opinion on the situation here. As far as backup support goes…he wouldn’t have just stood there and watched you get killed. That was just common sense,” Mick tried to placate the hunter. 

“Well I don’t give a shit what your elders want. So far we’ve met three of you bastards, and two of them have tried to kill us or someone we were protecting. You sit here and tell us you’ve come in peace, well I had doubts about that before and this just proves it,” Dean said angrily. 

“You are protecting a killer,” Ketch said. “I had orders to clean up after you and that qualifies. The old man himself ordered her execution,” he said that last sentence to Mick. 

“He did or the council did?” Mick asked narrowing his eyes at Ketch. The council had told him that they were simply to investigate and take no action for the time being. If the old man was giving orders behind the council’s back, then he needed to know. 

“I didn’t ask,” Ketch said as if that should be obvious. 

“Well I will get to the bottom of this, I assure you,” Mick said and turned to walk out of the dungeon, followed by Sam, Dean, and Gabriel. Once they reached the main level, Mick turned to them and said, “I have no idea what’s going on here, but if his orders were different than mine, someone is playing a dangerous game and I will find out who and why. I must tell you though, they will never accept you holding two of their people prisoner,” Mick told them apologetically. 

“Tell you what. You get to the bottom of this, and figure out who’s playing whom, and if you’re not the one being played we will be willing to turn one of them over to your custody. Consider it a test. If we catch them coming after us again, we’re done for good. Got it?” Gabriel said with a note of finality. 

“Understood. I will be in touch,” Mick said turning to leave, handing over the cuffs after he stepped outside again. 

Once he was gone, Gabriel turned to the others and said, “Now that’s settled, I think I’ll go check on our guest.” He stepped into the hallway that Magda was relegated to and reached out with his senses to find her before knocking on the door. 

Magda heard the knock on the door and opened it fearfully. She knew that someone was going to come and talk to her, and she just hoped that they were right that this person was immune to her powers. She really didn’t want to hurt anyone else. Especially since they were so nice to her. If she ended up hurting Sam’s husband, they would probably let the motorcycle guy kill her. “H-hi,” she said nervously, opening the door all the way so he could come in if he wanted to. 

“Hi kiddo. I’m Gabriel,” he introduced himself cheerfully. He could see she was scared, but wasn’t sure what exactly she was afraid of. Or more that he wasn’t sure what she was the most afraid of at this particular moment. There was a lot that she was probably afraid of. He sat lazily in one of the chairs, motioning her to do the same. He had every intention of telling her who and what he was…and healing her…but he wanted to get her a little more comfortable with him first. “How are you settling in?” 

“O-Okay I guess,” she said with a shrug looking at the floor. 

“Do you have everything you need? Clothes, books, whatever?” he prodded. 

“Yeah. I’m okay,” she said quickly. 

“Are you sure? I can get you something else if you want. Anything you want.”

“I’m okay. Really. I have enough books for weeks and enough clothes for a few days. I…I might need some more bandages soon though,” she admitted. 

“Once we get your problem taken care of we’ll go shopping for some new clothes,” he promised and since she brought it up, decided to bite the bullet. “I can heal you if you want so you don’t need bandages at all.”

“H-heal me?” she stuttered as her head snapped up to look at him with wide eyes. “W-what do you mean?”

“Well, Sammy told you that I’m immune to your powers right?” he asked and she nodded. “Well the reason I’m immune to your powers is because I’m an archangel. I can heal your injuries.”

Her eyes widened even more…this time in fear. She had spent so long being told that she was the devil and that she deserved to be punished that she couldn’t see an angel with anything but fear, no matter how much her head insisted that he could be trusted. “I…I’m sorry. I didn’t…didn’t mean…”

Gabriel frowned for a moment. He hadn’t realized that she was quite so fragile and the idea of a child being so afraid of him tugged at his heart in the worst way. He went over and knelt in front of her chair and put one hand on her shoulder as the other brushed her hair out of her eyes. He sent a pulse of healing even as he said, “Hey, now. It’s okay. It wasn’t your fault. None of it was.”

“You…you know…”

“Sammy told me everything, but you know what else? I can see your soul, sweetie, and it’s just as bright and pure as any child’s soul could be. You’ve done nothing wrong. I promise you,” he said softly as his thumb wiped away a tear that had fallen and before he realized she had moved, he had an armful of crying girl. “Shh. It’s okay. I’ve got you. You’re okay,” he said soothingly as he rubbed her back. 

Magda just couldn’t stop the tears from coming. The absolution from an archangel, being wrapped up in an archangel’s arms, being comforted by a being that she had thought would hate her, it was cleansing. It was like every fear and pain and torment that she had endured was just washing away. She wondered if that was a natural thing when being cared for by an angel or if he was deliberately doing something to help her, but she didn’t care. She just clung to him as she cried. 

Gabriel wasn’t sure how long she had been crying on him before her sobs turned to sniffles and then her breathing evened out as she fell asleep. He looked down fondly and got to his feet, lifting her up with him, and settled her into the bed, covered her up, kissed her forehead, and quietly left the room in search of his husband. They had something they needed to talk about. 

Gabriel found both Sam and Dean in the library, with books about psychic abilities spread around them. He asked to talk to Sam alone and pulled him out of the library. “I know that you and Dean have temporary custody of Magda, but what if we adopted her?”

“You mean…really adopt her? You and me? As parents?” Sam asked blinking in shock. 

“That’s exactly what I mean. That kid could use some stability and some real parents who will look out for her and love her. We can do that easily.”

“I…I don’t know…Can I think about it for a little while? You didn’t mention this idea to her did you?” 

“Of course, I didn’t mention it to her. I wouldn’t do that without talking to you first. Just think about it and let me know when you decide,” Gabriel told him. He just couldn’t deny that protective instinct that cropped up in him when dealing with her. 

“Is she okay though?” Sam asked concerned. 

“She will be. She’s got a lot of baggage. I healed her, by the way, but her mind will take a little longer to straighten out. We can handle it though,” Gabriel told him and he meant both short term and long term. Either way, he was going to push for her to stay with them anyway, even if they didn’t adopt her and she just remained their ward. 

“Okay. Good. You wanna come help us work on a way to help her?” he asked. 

“Try and stop me,” Gabriel said with a chuckle as he followed them back into the library. Sam just shook his head at Dean’s curious look. He wasn’t ready to discuss the idea with his brother yet. He needed to wrap his own head around it first.


	5. Chapter 5

They worked long into the night and the next morning, after dropping off two paper plates with no utensils in the dungeons, Gabriel took a nice breakfast to Magda. He knocked on the door to her room, but she came up behind him, having come out of the bathroom. “Gabriel! You’re back,” she said with a smile. Part of her had been afraid that he would abandon her after her breakdown. 

“Sure am, kiddo. I brought breakfast,” Gabriel said glad to see that she was doing better today. 

Once they were in her room and sitting down she said, “I’m sorry…about last night…I just…”

“You have nothing to be sorry about. I know you’ve been through a lot. I’m just glad I could help. Truly,” Gabriel told her putting a reassuring hand on her shoulder. 

“You did. A lot,” she said turning to her breakfast. 

When she didn’t say anything else, Gabriel decided to take the bull by the horns. She was doing better, yes, but she was still very timid. “I know you probably have questions. I mean, it’s not every day you meet an archangel,” he said leadingly. 

“I…um…I don’t want to offend…”

“You won’t. It’s okay. Just ask,” Gabriel encouraged. 

“O-okay. So you…you’ve met God?” she asked. 

“Sure have. The stories I could tell you about my father…” Gabriel said with a laugh. 

“So, he doesn’t mind that you…um…are married to another guy?” she asked with a wince. 

That question opened up two different cans of worms, so he took a second to decide which one to address first. “Contrary to popular belief, my father was never against love in any form. It never mattered to him. From what I have learned from watching humanity, at the time that whole rumor started, population was at an all-time low and many villages were struggling on the brink of extinction. It was easier to forbid same sex couples to encourage people to make babies. Making it seem like it was God’s command kept people listening to those rules. It just ended up snowballing into something far bigger. Too big. Now there are some people who will never be convinced that there is nothing wrong with it. Love is love kiddo. No matter who its between.” He waited a moment to make sure that she acknowledged that. If she was still struggling with that idea, his plans for he and Sam to adopt her might just be stopped before they even start, but she seemed to accept it without any trouble.

“That said, my father doesn’t actually know about my relationship personally. At least, not that I know of. He left this world and heaven behind a long long time ago. He left the angels to watch over it in his place,” he explained. 

“So…he just abandoned us?” she asked heart-brokenly. 

No way was he going to go into the whole mess that went down in heaven all those millennia ago, so he decided to go a different way with this explanation. Maybe someday he would tell her more. “You have to understand something about my father. He is creation in its purest form. He left us to create more worlds, more people, more galaxies. I would imagine that he rarely sticks around for long once he’s done creating somewhere. I like to think that all those other worlds he’s created have angels watching out for them too, but truthfully, I don’t know, but I know this one does.”

“Is this the first world he created?” she asked curiously. 

“It’s the first that’s still around. Back then there was the darkness. The destruction to his creation, and she destroyed everything. Once we got her locked away, this was the first world he created after that.”

“Her? The darkness was a she? Your mother?” Magda asked, suddenly a well of curiosity. 

Gabriel couldn’t help but chuckle at that. “No. We angels never had a mother. We were crafted from the primordial building blocks of creation. She was father’s sister.”

“So where did they come from? Did they have parents? Were they created? Who created them?” The questions were coming fast and furious now. 

“I don’t know if even they knew those answers. If they did, they never shared with any of us, and I don’t think anyone ever thought to ask.” It was nearly lunchtime before Gabriel extricated himself from her to go whip up some lunch. “I’m gonna go help Sam and Dean do some research into your problem after lunch, but I’ll bring you back a cell phone when I bring your lunch, and if you need anything feel free to call me okay? I’ll make sure my number along with Sam’s and Dean’s are programmed in.” 

“Thank you,” she said giving him a tentative hug, but he pulled her in tightly, showing her that it was okay to hug him, before he pulled back a pressed a kiss to her forehead.

“I’ll be right back with your lunch.”

They settled into a routine over the next few days where Gabriel would spend the mornings with Magda and the afternoons working with the hunters on her psychic issue. It was four days after they last spoke before anyone heard from Mick again. He didn’t say much on the phone, just called and asked if he could come by. They agreed, but went through the usual security checks. He came in and settled in the library to give them the news. “Alright, so it seems that the old man who functions as the head of the council, had different motives in sending us over here than the rest of the council. When they insisted that we investigate before taking over by force, he’s been working behind the scenes to push the issue. His goal was to push the American hunters onto the offensive in order to push the council into going with eradication.”

“Eradication? Of who? Us?” Sam asked.

“All American hunters. He wanted us to insert our own hunter units, retake the Men of Letters safehouses, and expand our operation over here as well. While the rest of the council probably wouldn’t mind if it came to that, they would prefer to resolve things peacefully if possible, so once they found out what the old man was up to, he was eliminated,” Mick told them. 

“Eliminated? Like killed?” Dean asked incredulously. Mick nodded. “They killed their own guy?” 

“You must understand how we operate. Loyalty is everything. If one of our own people works against us, they could use our secrets, turn our agents, there would be chaos. It would be like a civil war. That cannot happen. Any divisive elements are eliminated before it comes to that.”

“Still. That’s cold,” Gabriel said. He was an archangel and that was cold even for him. 

“Perhaps, but it is the way things are done. That said, they are demanding that Ketch be released. He was simply following orders and had no way of knowing that they were not endorsed by the full council, and so should not be punished for it,” Mick told them. “In return, they are giving you two options as to the course of action to be taken with him. He can either be pulled back to London and leave the country completely, or he can be placed…temporarily, mind you…under your command. I would suggest that you take the second option, personally. He is the very best hunter that we have.”

“You want us to take him under our command so that he can turn on us the second we let our guard down?” Dean asked disbelievingly. 

“He would be under orders to follow your orders and not to work against you in any way and you would be notified before those orders were rescinded,” Mick told them. 

“In other words, we would have to babysit him,” Gabriel pointed out.

“Ketch is…in many ways…an attack dog. Just point him at a problem and he will take care of it quickly and efficiently.”

“Yeah, and his way of taking care of it involves killing innocent children in cold blood,” Sam said pointedly. “Not someone we want on our team.”

“Then you will have to give him guidelines,” Mick said as if that was no problem. “I would be interested in hearing the details of that situation though if you wouldn’t mind sharing.”

“You’re interested, or your council is interested?” Dean asked suspiciously. 

“Both, to be perfectly honest.”

They looked at each other and after a round of shrugs, Sam started the story and explained everything that happened and even Mick was sympathetic to Magda by the end. After the story, Gabriel looked at the time and said, “Speaking of…I should take her dinner to her. I’ll be right back.”

“You have her here?” Mick asked wide-eyed suddenly very nervous. 

“We do. She is currently behind anti-psychic wards so we are all safe and she can’t come out of the hallway we have her housed in. We take her meals and anything else she needs to her until we can find a way to block her powers completely so she can come out and be normal,” Sam said with narrowed eyes daring him to say anything. 

Mick noticed the look and knew that he was being tested here again. “I see. As long as we are safe,” he said with a nod. 

Not long after Gabriel got back, Bobby came rushing into the library announcing, “The magical alarms are going haywire in there.”

Sam, Dean, and Gabriel got up to follow Bobby back into the room and since Mick wasn’t forbidden to go with them, he followed too. He wanted to find out more about this magical alarm system. He waited until he got a look at it before he asked, “What is it?” 

“We monitor for certain types and concentrations of magic. A single witch isn’t going to register, if only because we’d never get a break chasing them all down and not all of them are bad witches anyway, but any significant amount of blood magic or soul magic will generate an alarm,” Dean explained as Sam and Gabriel worked the machines to narrow it down. 

“Got it. There’s a pretty big piece of soul magic located somewhere in Ripley, MO,” Gabriel told them. 

“Soul magic?” Dean said distastefully. “I honestly hoped we would never have to deal with soul magic.”

“So did I,” Sam said with a shudder. “You’re the best at scrying, you think you could try and figure out exactly what we’re dealing with before we decide how to handle it?” he asked his brother. 

“Sure thing. Shouldn’t be too hard with a location and the type of magic. At least I hope there isn’t more than one instance of soul magic there.”

“What’s soul magic?” Mick asked, his curiosity peaked given the disgust in their voices when speaking of it. 

“It’s…about the most evil evil you could imagine. Soul magic is…so completely unnatural. There is not a single good use of soul magic. Just tapping into the soul mutilates it, and it always requires a live sacrifice, usually more than one. It’s just…bad,” Sam explained, Dean already gone to try and scry for it while the others headed back to the library, except for Bobby who was checking to see who they had in that area that they could send after it once they knew what they were dealing with. 

It was about an hour later when Dean came back into the library and handed over a sketch of an object. “It’s tied to an object?” Gabriel asked in alarm. 

“Yeah. It is, which I know is pretty bad on its own, but take a close look at the engravings,” Dean told them. 

Sam leaned closer to study it more in detail and then he saw it. “I suppose it’s too much to hope that this isn’t the worst case scenario?” he asked wearily. 

“When is it NOT the worst case scenario?” Dean asked wryly. 

“What’s the worst case scenario?” Mick asked. 

“This is soul magic tied to a gold Nazi pocket watch. I’m sure you know only the highest rungs of the Nazi party could afford that kind of luxury. Given the fact that Hitler killed two of his own men before killing himself…” Sam trailed off not even able to say it. 

“It’s likely that this object contains Hitler’s stored soul and could even be capable of resurrecting him in the right hands with the right knowledge,” Gabriel finished. 

“But who could have that knowledge and even know it exists,” Mick asked not really seeing the need for alarm. 

“The Thule Society,” Dean spat. “I hate those Nazi bastards.”

“The Thule? But they have been gone for decades,” Mick protested. 

“No. They haven’t,” Sam said. “We’ve had dealings with them before. We need to contact Aaron. See if the Judah Initiative have any ideas about any of this,” he suggested. 

“The Judah Initiative are still around too?” Mick asked, wondering just how out of touch they had been in their little bubble. 

“Oh sure. There aren’t many of them left anymore, but they are still plugging away at the problem. I’m sure it’s been going better since we helped get them the ledger of all the Thule necromancers. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are getting desperate,” Dean told him. 

“Our first priority needs to be finding and defusing this object,” Gabriel pointed out. 

“And figuring out any potential blood relatives of Hitler. If they plan on using it, they will need his blood. We’ll need to put eyes on anyone they could use,” Sam added. 

“If I may make a suggestion?” Mick asked, thinking this would be the perfect opportunity for a little team-up. 

“Go ahead,” Dean said in a tone that said that he better like it. 

“My organization has dozens of people set aside for nothing but research and excellent tools. They can help with locating relatives, and getting the object would be a perfect job for Mr. Ketch.”

“Give us a minute,” Sam said pulling Gabriel and Dean to the side for a discussion and they came back to the table after a few minutes. “Your people can help us locate the family members, but that’s all they do. They relay the locations to us and we will handle it from here. They do not put their own surveillance on anyone. In return, we will let Ketch do this, as a test. If anything goes wrong, we want him on the next plane back to London.”

“I understand. Let me get my people on the research and then we can go brief Mr. Ketch,” Mick said pulling out his cell phone. They listened to him relay the request to make sure that he told them what he was supposed to before they headed down to the dungeons.


	6. Chapter 6

As soon as Mick entered the room, Ketch and Toni both levelled glares at him. “About time you came back to get us out of here,” Ketch said. 

“I told you, Ketch. He’s not going to get us out of here. He’s all buddy buddy with these inbred idiots now,” Toni told him. 

“Actually, I am here to get Ketch out of here, with new orders from the council,” Mick said smugly with a glance to Toni. 

“What new orders?” Ketch asked suspiciously. 

“It seems that the old man was going behind the council’s back. He had no right to order the death of the girl. The council has ordered that you be temporarily placed under the command of the Winchesters.”

“You won’t mind if I call them to confirm this then?” Ketch asked suspiciously, narrowing his eyes at Mick. 

“Not at all,” Mick said handing him his phone to do so. 

“What about me?” Toni asked rattling her chains. 

“The release of Ketch is a good faith gesture on the American’s part. If he behaves and proves that the Men of Letters can be trusted, you will be released back to London to face your consequences there,” Mick promised. 

“Why does he get released and not me?” she asked angrily. 

“Because he was following orders and had no way of knowing that they weren’t endorsed by the whole council. You disobeyed the council’s orders, no matter if you had different secret orders or not,” Mick told her, as Ketch handed him his phone back. 

He turned and looked to the Winchesters. “I am at your disposal,” he said with a polite nod and held out his hands to have tDhe restraints removed. 

“First the rules. Then we let you go,” Dean said firmly and Ketch lowered his hands. “You do not kill any humans for any reason without our approval. You will find another way to stop them if you need to. If you run across any werewolves, you will administer the cure that we will give you...don’t start. There is a cure, that’s all you need to know,” Dean cut him off before he could argue. “If you run across any vampires or demons, you will contain them in a warded safe house that we will give you the location of to await transport here to be cured. You will not harm the girl we saved when we met. She is completely off limits like the rest of the humans in the world. We reserve the right to add more rules as we see fit. Understood?”

“Perfectly,” Ketch drawled and Gabriel could sense his sincerity so he nodded to Sam who unlocked the restraints. 

“Now let’s go brief you on the job we have for you now,” Sam said leading the way upstairs after placing the same magic suppression bracelets that Mick had on. He too would be wearing them while in the bunker. 

After they explained what they needed him to do, Ketch curled his lip and said, “You want me to retrieve a pocket watch from an antique shop? That’s it?” 

“There is a good chance that you will run into Thule necromancers on this job. Don’t take it lightly,” Dean warned. 

“Just so we are clear…they are not considered human correct?” Ketch asked hopefully. 

“They aren’t,” Sam told him with a nod. 

“Hell, if we were getting paid, I’d offer you a bonus for every one of those bastards you take out permanently,” Dean told him. 

“Perhaps this assignment will not be a total waste of my skills then,” Ketch said satisfied. 

“Just remember…The number one priority is that watch. You CANNOT lose it, no matter what,” Gabriel told him. 

“What is so important about this watch?” Ketch asked curiously, realizing there was more here than he was being told. 

“Let’s just say it could be used to resurrect Hitler himself,” Sam told him, not willing to spare the details. Ketch just nodded and headed out without another word. Only Mick could see the discomfort in his eyes at the thought of a resurrected Hitler. Mick was one of the few people who knew that Ketch’s grandparents died in concentration camps and his father barely survived one. 

Once he was gone, Gabriel turned to the others. “Okay, we need to put our Magda problem on hold and work on creating a ritual to remove the soul from the object. I don’t want that thing around us any longer than it has to be.”

“Agreed. And until we destroy it, it will be locked up in the dangerous artifacts room well out of the reach of the kids,” Dean added. 

“You have children here? In the bunker?” Mick asked shocked that they would allow their children in such a place. 

Sam rolled his eyes. Dean was the one who had been adamant about keeping Lisa and the kids out of the way whenever Mick was here and then he went and spilled the beans. “This is our home. We live here with our families. Anything dangerous is locked and warded on the lower floors so they can’t get to it,” he explained. 

Mick wanted to stay and watch them work on that, fascinated by their knowledge and the whole process. Despite the fact that he only understood every third word they said and nothing of what they were scribbling down and passing between them. They had been working about an hour when Dean’s phone buzzed. Lisa was texting him and asking if it was okay for the kids to come and say goodnight to him or if their visitor was still there. He replied that he was still there but he knew about them now so they might as well. When Lisa brought them in, Dean looked at her apologetically as he pulled the little ones onto his lap. “I’m sorry, Lis. This is an emergency.”

“It’s okay. I know,” she told him leaning down for a quick kiss. He didn’t usually work late, and he rarely missed tucking the kids into bed, so he could have a pass every once in a while. After the kids did their rounds saying goodnight to their uncles too, they headed back out. 

“You have a beautiful family,” Mick said with a smile. He really did love kids. 

“Thank you,” Dean said after studying him for a moment looking for any signs of sarcasm or deceit. 

About two hours later, Mick’s phone buzzed, and he pulled it out to look at it before saying, “We have names and current listed addresses for all of Hitler’s living blood relatives. Do you have an email I should send it to?”

“Already?” Sam asked. 

“I told you. We’re good,” Mick said with a smug grin. Sam just nodded and gave him the email address and he headed out to print it up and take it to Bobby. Everyone was working late tonight to deal with this issue. 

Bobby came in a little while later. “We got a bit of a problem,” he said. 

“Shoot,” Dean said, hoping that it really was just a ‘bit’ of a problem and not a disaster. 

“I got hunters near all the people on the list and heading to them except for one. The only person in the area there is Henry,” he said. 

“How far is the nearest hunter?” Sam asked. 

“Almost ten hours away. She’s all the way up in Maine,” he told them. “Then there are the ones that are living overseas,” he added. 

“We can put a watch on the ones outside the country if you like,” Mick offered and they all reluctantly nodded. “We don’t have anyone near Maine though either, unfortunately. 

“Have Henry get eyes on her for now, and reroute the nearest hunter to relieve him. We’ll just have to hope that he doesn’t encounter any trouble,” Dean said with a sigh knowing they didn’t have much choice. 

“This Henry is not a hunter?” Mick asked curiously. 

“Nope. He’s a book nerd. We’ve been working on getting his fighting skills up to par, but he still has a long way to go. He’s not really built for it,” Sam told him. 

“Maine is far from any known activity in this case. It is likely that all will be quiet,” Mick said attempting to reassure them. He could tell this person meant a lot to them, and remembered them mentioning that he normally lived here with them so he must be as close as family if not actual family. 

“You don’t know Winchester luck,” Gabriel said with an amused snort. 

Mick spent a lot of time at the bunker the next few days while they waited for Ketch to return. He reported in daily. He had missed the watch at the antique shop. The Thule got it before he got there, but he was tracking them. They had heard from the hunters in the town and found that they had tried to get to the girl, but they were held off, so they were likely headed to find an easier target. Sam took a look at the list of other relatives and sent Ketch the address of the next closest one, hoping he could intercept them before they got there. 

It was three days before Ketch reported that he had the watch and was headed back. None of them would rest easy until it was destroyed though and when he finally came in the morning of the third day, looking like he had driven all night to get there, Gabriel quickly took the watch holding it between his thumb and forefinger like it was the most disgusting thing he had ever seen and rushed out of the room to put it away. 

As he left, Ketch walked over to the table where Sam and Dean were still working away and looked over their shoulder and at the place Gabriel had vacated. “What’s all that?” he asked curiously. 

Mick decided to field the question so they wouldn’t have to interrupt their work to answer. They had been working furiously the last few minutes and seemed to be onto something. He didn’t understand how they were doing it, but he had picked up enough by observation and browsing some of the more basic books they had to give a general explanation. “They are using aritmentic and runic calculations as well as magical and Spellcrafting theory to create a ritual to ‘defuse’ the watch, so to speak.”

Ketch blinked at him for a moment as he tried to wrap his head around that and leaned over to look closer at what they were doing, and he couldn’t follow any of it. “They can do that?” he asked in shock. 

“It seems so,” Mick said nodding understandingly. He knew just how lost his friend was feeling right now. 

“Why aren’t you helping?” Ketch asked curiously. He knew that Mick was one of the top researchers in the Men of Letters. 

“Because I don’t understand half of what they are doing,” Mick told him bluntly. 

“But you were top of your class at Kendrick’s.”

“Yes, and they were top of their class at their school which is in a whole different dimension. Literally and figuratively,” Mick told him. 

“That’s impossible,” Ketch said trying to figure out what angle they were playing at. 

“Apparently not. The proof is sitting right in front of us,” Mick told him. He was now sure that they were onto something big since they hadn’t even acknowledged the conversation happening not five feet from them. 

It was only another moment before Gabriel came back into the room and Sam slid a stack of papers over to him. “Double check my calculations?” 

“Sure thing,” Gabriel said with a nod and he flipped through the papers quickly. “That’s pretty good, but I think we should add a Futhark bridge to the runic configuration here just to shore up that weak spot, but I think we have the containment part done. Now we just need to work on expelling it. Got anything there Deano?” 

“Almost,” Dean said, sliding what he had so far over to Gabriel for him to check over it while Sam watched over Dean’s shoulder making suggestions and corrections to what he was currently working on until Gabriel slid Dean’s stack over to Sam for one last check. They couldn’t afford to be off on this even a little bit. 

The Brits watched in awe as they finished the separate parts and then worked on devising the ritual as a whole, putting those parts together. By the time they finished a few hours later, they were in a rush to get it done. “This will take about an hour. If you’re gonna stick around don’t leave the library,” Dean told them. 

“May I observe the ritual?” Mick asked hopefully. 

“Not this time,” Gabriel told him. “Having an extra person there will throw off our calculations and if this thing escapes from the containment we don’t need to be worried about trying to protect someone else from the havoc it could cause.”

Mick nodded sadly and they headed out. As soon as they were alone, Ketch took out his phone and started photographing the pages of their work which were about the size of a book by now. Mick knew that it would end up as a book when they were done with it, to add to their research section of the library. “What are you doing?” he asked nervously glancing back to the door.

“The council wants me here following their orders, but they also want reports on their capabilities,” Ketch pointed out. 

“Well yes. That’s why I have been reporting what I know,” Mick told him, not sure if this was crossing a line or not. 

“Well, to speak frankly, they don’t believe you. This is just what they need to either prove or disprove your reports,” Ketch told him. 

When they got back just over an hour later, Gabriel smirked at them. “Did we give you enough time to copy all the pages or do you need a few minutes.”

“You knew…” Mick asked. 

“Of course, we did. We’re not stupid, despite the fact that the majority of your organization seems to think so. You better have put it back in the right order,” Dean said as he picked up the stack of papers to shuffle through them. 

“Obviously,” Ketch drawled. “I AM a professional.”

“Good. And keep in mind that this was your one free look. You’re welcome to look at the books while you’re here, but our research is off limits,” Sam told them and they nodded respectfully. They would accept that. For now, at least. If all this checked out, they knew that their superiors would be chomping at the bit to learn all they could from these Americans despite popular belief. 

“Where is the watch?” Ketch asked.

“It’s still down in storage. We were planning to melt it down later,” Gabriel told him. 

“It is no longer a danger?” he asked and when they all shook their heads, he asked, “May I have it melted down?”

They looked at each other. “Well he is the one who tracked it down for us,” Sam said with a shrug and the others had no problem with it either so Dean went down to get it for him. None of them asked, but they could all see now that he had a personal stake in this one.


	7. Chapter 7

Ketch disappeared once they handed him the watch, presumably to go melt it down, and Mick turned to them and asked, “Does this mean you’re keeping Mr. Ketch around?” 

“For the moment,” Dean said. “It depends on how well he continues to do.”

“Very well. I suppose I will take my leave of you now, since the emergency is past. You have my number if you need anything,” Mick told them. 

That done, Gabriel went to spend some time with Magda. They had rather ignored her the last few days while trying to deal with this issue. The other two quickly turned their attention back to her problem. When Gabriel returned by dinnertime, Sam pulled him aside. “I want to adopt her,” he told his husband. “But I want to wait to ask her until we get this finished so we can ask her together.”

Gabriel pulled him in and kissed him deeply. “Absolutely, Samshine,” he said happily. “Can we go ahead and tell your brother our intentions?” 

“Sure. Why not,” Sam said with a grin. 

Dean’s only response to the news was, “Good. She could use some parents who are good for her.” 

The next morning, Sam woke to find a rather long email from Ketch, with someone else, presumably his superiors in the British Men of Letters cc’d on it. It was a rather detailed mission report and it caught Sam off guard. He hadn’t been expecting something like that, but he realized he should have. This organization seemed to do things legit. He had a laugh at the thought of what the American hunters would do if asked to write a mission report before he shook his head and sat down to read it. He was surprised to find that he actually appreciated it. It was rather dry and businesslike, but it gave him a little more insight to how their new ‘employee’ operated. It seemed that in addition to killing and burning a total of nine Thule, he had bailed out the American hunters who were watching the girl in that town when they went for her which accounted for three of the kills. He had also let the son of one of the Thule who happened to be human and not a necromancer go, but with a stern order to keep his nose clean. He did request permission to notify law enforcement to keep an eye on him and Sam quickly sent back an email stating that he would do that. He had better connections with law enforcement in the US than the Brits would. That done, he called Jodi and asked her to put him on some kind of watch list. Said that he had been helping Nazi’s trying to resurrect Hitler. She was tempted to just have him arrested anyway, but they had nothing on him so she restrained herself. She would definitely make sure he was watched closely though. 

Once that was done, he headed back to the library to consider working on Magda’s problem. By the time Gabriel joined them at lunchtime, Sam was frustrated. “I don’t think we’re going to be able to completely remove her powers,” he told them. “They are too engrained in her genetic makeup, and there isn’t any safe way to modify that.”

“Yeah, I was thinking the same thing,” Dean said sadly. “What if we just block them somehow?” 

“You mean like a bracelet or something?” Gabriel asked liking that idea. 

“What about some kind of implant instead. I mean if someone wanted to use her for their own ends, the bracelet could be removed, but an implant would be a little harder,” Dean suggested. 

“I don’t know if I like the idea of implanting her with something. What if we just enchant the bracelet to only be taken off by her or one of us?” Sam asked. 

“How about we make it just one of us for now. When she’s grown up and out on her own we can see about modifying it, but she is still just a kid. What if she were manipulated or threatened somehow to remove it?” Gabriel suggested. 

Sam and Dean nodded, so they took a new track with their research. Enchanting something to block her powers wasn’t nearly so complicated. It would essentially be like a more focused version of the wards she was currently behind. They had that figured out by dinner and after dinner, Sam asked for Lisa’s help shopping. He wanted her to have a bracelet that she liked, but had no idea what a teenage girl might like. The two of them headed out to a jewelry store to look around. Sam told her that it needed to have plenty of flat surfaces to draw the runes on and they settled on a nice silver bracelet that alternated butterflies and flowers that would be held flat against her wrist. 

Once they got back an hour later, Sam and Gabriel worked long into the night to finish the enchantments. They wanted to be able to give it to her in the morning. They managed to get it finished around one am, and they headed to bed. 

The next morning, Gabriel went to Magda’s room and brought her out into the hall where Sam met them at the end. “We have a surprise for you,” he told her. 

Once they got there, Sam took over the explaining. “We couldn’t find a safe way to modify your mind so that you don’t have the powers at all, but we were able to enchant a bracelet to block them. It can only be taken off by me, Gabriel, or Dean, but we’ll key you into it later on,” he told her handing her the case with the bracelet. 

She beamed at them and took it, opening the case and her grin got even wider as she saw that it was even a pretty bracelet. “It’s beautiful,” she breathed out. 

“Let me help you put it on?” Gabriel asked with his own soft smile as he reached for it. She nodded and handed it to him. 

Once it was on securely, Sam reached out his hand for her and led her out of the hallway. “Now what do you say we take a little tour of the place?” He wanted to spend a little time with her before springing the whole adoption idea on her. The tour skipped the dungeons, but she was old enough to be shown the ingredient and artifact storage, and she was duly impressed. Especially when she found out in a little more detail exactly what they did here. When they ended up in the kitchen and sat down for lunch, Everyone else eating in the library today to give the three of them privacy to talk, Sam looked to Gabriel to start the discussion. He figured since Gabriel had spent more time with her, and the fact that he was an archangel and was the one she would be more likely worried about possibly not wanting her, he would be best to broach the subject. 

“So, Magda. Sammy and I were talking and…if you’re agreeable…we would like to adopt you. Officially.”

“So…you would be my dads? Isn’t that a lot of hassle? I mean…I’m fifteen. I won’t need parents much longer.”

“Oh, kiddo. You always need parents. You wouldn’t suddenly stop being our daughter the day you turn eighteen,” Gabriel told her softly. 

Magda closed her eyes against the tears that were prickling them. Being referred to as their daughter, the assurance that she would be wanted even after she was no longer an obligation, the idea of a happy loving family, it was overwhelming. After a few minutes, when she felt that she could without embarrassing herself, she opened her eyes, tears still shining in them, but not falling and she asked, “And you really want me? B-both of you?” she asked heartbreakingly hopeful. 

Sam put a hand on her shoulder as he said, “Absolutely.” 

“You better believe it, kid,” Gabriel added with a grin. 

“Then yes. I…I want it. Please,” she said as a single tear managed to leak from her eye. Sam brushed it away with his thumb and pulled her into a hug that Gabriel wasted no time in joining. 

“After lunch, we can go meet the rest of the family and get started on the paperwork, okay?” Sam suggested and she just nodded to overwhelmed to speak at the moment. They headed to the library after they ate, and she met everyone else. She had already met Dean of course, but Lisa immediately took the girl under her wing, telling her to call her aunt Lisa and that she was available for any girl stuff she didn’t want to go to her new dads about. Magda fell in love with the little ones right away and they took to her just as easily. She and Ben quickly hit it off and even Bobby was being a little less gruff than usual. Henry would be back the next day, and she would meet him then. 

They all had dinner together before they headed to Magda’s room to move her stuff into the room next to Sam and Gabriel’s in their wing. Lisa had already promised to take her shopping the next day, and Gabriel handed her a debit card from his account. Sam was the one with some sense and told her to only buy what Lisa and she had picked out and not to go overboard. Not that Gabriel couldn’t afford it, of course, but there was no reason to go nuts. She would already need a whole new wardrobe, toiletries, girl stuff that Sam didn’t really want to think much about, and a cell phone and computer. That was more than enough. 

While she and Lisa were shopping, Sam would go see about getting her enrolled in school. Magda seemed almost more excited for school than shopping, but he remembered that she had been pulled out of school and cut off from the world five years ago, so it made sense. He would have Ben look out for her as much as possible at school. She would have a whole school year to adjust with Ben there for his senior year before she was on her own. Of course, they would be in different classes and such, so he wouldn’t be able to do too much, but it was better than nothing. With a little magical enticement, the paperwork would be completed within two weeks. Magda had decided to keep her own name though rather than take the Winchester name.


	8. Chapter 8

A few weeks later, things were still going well. The school year had started so Magda and Ben were gone during the day. Ketch was still working out well. He wasn’t staying in the bunker of course, but the Brits had put him up in a hotel nearby where Mick was staying too. He occasionally came by with Mick who visited nearly every day, though spent most of the time he was there in the library reading. Just the books, not the research as he had been instructed. He doubted he would even understand any of the research without the books first anyway. Their people back in London were still trying to figure out exactly what their work on the watch ritual actually was, so things were at a bit of a standstill there. 

Sam and Dean had taken Ketch on a hunt themselves just after the Nazi incident, so they could show him how things were done here. He was obviously uncomfortable with the idea of impersonating law enforcement and actually talking to people and investigating rather than just blowing into town, killing anything suspicious and leaving without a trace, but he managed to catch on quickly enough, even if he was still rather brusque and cold with people. They had sent Ketch out on a few smaller cases relatively close by and Sam was still getting the mission reports and watching the news in those areas for any extra deaths. He had yet to kill an innocent, but there was one case where someone saw too much and he had called Sam and Dean to see what he was supposed to do in that situation. They told him to just make up some story to explain things away, and if they didn’t completely believe it, it didn’t matter. No one would believe them anyway if they tried to tell. They’d seen it a thousand times. 

Since Ketch was working out so well, and the men of letters were starting to earn their trust; Mick and Ketch didn’t even have to wear the wristbands within the bunker anymore, but they still weren’t allowed to carry weapons; they decided to release Lady Bevell into the hands of the Brits…with a few conditions. When Mick came by the next day, they sat him down. “We’ve decided that we will turn your other agent over to your people for her punishment, with a few conditions.” When Mick nodded, Sam continued with the conditions. “She will get out of this country immediately and never come back. She ever comes after us or ours again, we will kill her without hesitation.”

“I understand. It will take a day or two to make arrangements to have her sent back,” Mick told them. 

“Let us know when it’s done and we’ll hand her over. I want Ketch with her during transport until the plane is in the air,” Dean told him and he nodded again.

A few days later they were down to only one prisoner. The vampire they had at the start of all this for testing and experiments while working on the cure. Not all of it was particularly pleasant for the vamp, but it didn’t cross the line into true torture. Not that they wouldn’t go there if the situation called, but that didn’t mean they didn’t try to avoid it if possible. They finally got the cure worked out and tested successfully on their prisoner a few days after Lady Bevell left, with Mick and Ketch observing. It seemed the cure had an unintended side effect that the vamp didn’t remember anything that happened after being turned. They had a bit of a chore to explain to him everything he’d missed in the last sixty years that he was a vampire, but it still seemed to work well enough. They moved him into a more comfortable room, with full lockdown wards of course, for observation for a few days before letting him go with orders to call if anything seemed off with him. 

That did bring up a whole new discussion. “We need to consider what we’re going to do for these people. Some of them have been Vampires for hundreds of years, and if this memory loss thing is a normal side effect and not just this guy being different, they are going to be completely lost in this world. Maybe we should see about having some kind of orientation classes, at least for the time being until the cured vamps slow to a trickle, and maybe some kind of support system after that for the new ones.” Sam suggested. 

“But who would do something like that? We don’t have enough hunters out there as it is, so we would be talking about bringing new people in on the secret and I don’t really like that idea,” Gabriel said thoughtfully. 

“We don’t really have to bring in new people. There are retired hunters that could help out. Or hunters that have been too injured to stay in the game. I mean, a lot of them probably wouldn’t be able to look past what they once were to help them, but I’m sure some of them could,” Sam said. Even when curing the werewolves, most hunters just kept their distance from them after that. They administered the cure and then sent them on their way and they didn’t have the same memory loss. That and werewolves didn’t live forever like vampires. They still had human life spans. 

“I’m afraid anyone I could bring in from my organization would have the same problem. They wouldn’t care much that they aren’t Vampires anymore. The fact that they once were would be enough to treat them with hostility and distrust,” Mick added. 

“We’ll also need to set them up with new identities,” Dean pointed out. 

Sam pinched the bridge of his nose wearily. Who would have thought things would get even more complicated after the cure. “That, we can help with,” Mick offered. 

“And have your trigger-happy people knowing the identities of all former vamps? No thanks,” Dean told him. They may be willing to work with the Brits, but that didn’t mean they liked how they operated and they weren’t going to have their brand of justice in America. 

“We could put Frank on permanent retainer. It would be expensive, but…” Sam suggested. 

“The money aspect we ‘could’ let the Brits help with,” Dean said thoughtfully looking to Mick to see if he agreed.

“I am not sure if they would agree to funding something that we wouldn’t get access to the results of, but I can put in a request,” Mick offered. 

“Do that,” Gabriel said with a nod. If he HAD to fund it, he would, but there was only so much money he could inject into the world without throwing of the delicate economic stability. 

In the meantime, they converted the two unused hallways into something like holding cells, giving them twenty bedrooms for freshly cured vamps and they started putting out the word to have vampires start being brought in for the cure. Anytime they had a new cure, they always wanted to do the first rounds themselves so they could watch for any side effects and make sure it worked on everyone and not just some. Of course, the cure for demons was so complicated that they always had to be the ones to do it. It wasn’t just an injection that could be put into tranquilizer darts like the werewolf cure and the new vamp cure. It was a full ritual. Once things were running smoothly though, they would make sure that all hunters had vamp cure on them as well as the werewolf cure. Ketch was sent to help with the transport of the vampires. Despite having twenty available rooms, they only wanted to do ten at a time. They didn’t want to have to try and handle too many at once. 

They got Frank to the bunker and gave him his own rooms there as well, since he would be working for them pretty much non-stop for a while. They had promised him a large payday, but it remained to be seen where the money would be coming from. Whether it would be Gabriel or the Brits. It was a few days before Mick had an answer to their request. “I have been given leave to negotiate their funding of this venture,” he told them. “What they want is to learn all that you know about magic and the supernatural world, and in return they will fund this venture.”

“We can’t send them to our old school. Even if we could get them in, they only take children,” Gabriel told him, totally unwilling to go to the trouble of creating the whole dimension and let on that he was an archangel. He was still flying below the radar, though a lot of the American hunters were in on the secret. 

“Then perhaps an exchange program? One or two of you could go there and teach and/or some of them could come here and learn,” Mick began the negotiations. 

They took some time to discuss it amongst themselves and then called in Henry for a little more discussion before they got back to Mick. “Here’s our offer. You find us a book publisher that won’t balk at the type of books we have, and we will have our library copied and a syllabus created. Most of your people seem smart enough to understand the majority of it through the books. Henry will go back to London and handle any hands on supplemental teaching. In return, in addition to the funding, we also want copies of all your books on technomancy,” Gabriel told him. In that area, the Brits were ahead of them, mainly because they’d had other things to do rather than put in the time and effort of expanding that branch of magic beyond what the original men of letters had done. 

“That should be acceptable. I’ll need to put it in for approval though,” Mick said with a nod. The next day, Mick returned with a counteroffer. “We will give you everything we have on technomancy, as you call it, both references and current research, in return for the recipes and proceedures for the cures that you currently have and any future ones you develop.”

“As long as we get the same for any cures your people develop in the future as well,” Sam told him. They had already discussed that possibility and the more people who had access to the cures the better.

“Agreed,” Mick said with a nod. He had been authorized to offer that as soon as they asked for the cures, knowing that would be a likely counter-request. “I will have a full contract drawn up and sent over after the council signs it.”

The contract arrived the same day the first round of Vamps did, four days later. First they got them cured and set up in the ‘lockdown ward’ as they had taken to calling it before sitting down to peruse the contract. Sam got first look as a prior aspiring law student. Mick was duly impressed when he found out that Sam graduated pre-law from Stanford at the top of his class. Once Sam was done and pronounced it good, Gabriel looked it over. He knew as much law as Sam, and could look it over with a trickster’s eye. Everything decided, they signed it, kept a copy to be filed in the bunker, and handed the other copy to Mick. 

They had arranged that Mick would remain in the US as a liason between them and they would teach him personally. They allowed him and Ketch, who was now on long term assignment, to move into the bunker, though there were still places that they weren’t permitted and were warded against them. Henry was very happy with the arrangement since he greatly enjoyed teaching, far more than the research and borderline hunting that he had been doing in the states. Henry waited to go over until all the books were copied. They just made one copy of each for now and enchanted an expanded trunk to hold them, and Henry’s personal belongings for the trip. The Brits could make any further copies of the books.


End file.
